For you to see web marketing in a different light I first need to introduce a new picture of the web, and then a different understanding of web marketing can emerge. Following that introduction this article can then talk about what is important about social media, along with beliefs and values, as they pertain to search engines and web marketing.

In the mid 90’s a lot of media pundits were trying to say what the Internet, and more specifically the web, was all about – but no one really knew. Some compared it to television and some compared it to newspapers and others said it was most like the telephone because it behaved like a one-to- one communication media.

It looked like television because of the screen similarity, and it looked like newspapers because of the text content, and it acted like a phone conversation in how it behaved as a one-to- one communication media.

All of these different metaphors missed the primary difference that the web brought into being and that was the search engine. Without a search engine the web would be as useless as a library without index cards. It would be a tangled mess of invisible and unsorted web sites, and the great pool of information would largely be invisible.

Search engines ground the web into a usable reality through the written word when a search is conducted, and then search engines became the eyes of web users for finding their way around in the depths and darkness of billions of web pages.

Search engines give us social media

In the same way that you and I search for information others search for other people and find their groups to belong to. Just as the search engines make finding specific information a reality they also make it possible for groups to form and for people to find the group they have affinity with.

How do people find their groups? How do they search? And why do we need to know how this works in order to develop a web marketing strategy?

Deep Pockets

If your business has deep pockets then you can use contemporary marketing research methods by conducting expensive testing with market research firms. But what if you don’t have deep pockets? And what if your market is anonymous like the web market is? What options do you have?

As you are probably aware, a web market does not provide you with demographic data to help you target a market. Until a visitor to your web site has decided to contact you they remain anonymous and you do not know a thing about them in terms of marketing information. How could you even conduct a proper test if you do not have any boundaries to work within?

Your web market is an intangible, yet very real market. Your web site is simply on a fishing expedition with your keyword signals that you are using for bait. What does your market feed on and what should your keywords be?

Who is your market and where are they?

Are you going to throw your line into the big pond with all your competition and fish with popular keywords for bait? You have to wonder if your market is really in the big pond, especially if you are looking for a niche market. How can you possibly find your market without very deep pockets? And what if you are fishing in the wrong pond with the wrong bait?

I suppose, with enough time and experience, you will find out which pond to fish in and what keywords your market feeds on, but this could take years of gathering information and hours of analysis. And even then you may still be guessing.

Turn the focus inward

So far I have asked external questions and the answers you would get back are not the answers you want to hear. What keywords to use? Where to find your market? Who are they and where are they? The answers are all the same… more testing and keyword research.

What if you turned the questions inward instead? What if you asked questions you already have the answers for? Suppose you asked yourself what you value the most about your business? What is your attitude toward your market? What gives you the greatest sense of reward in running your business?

Answer those questions and you’ve got the beginnings of a marketing strategy to send signals to your market – and let them find you.

On the web, this makes finding your market easier than by using demographics because the search engines do the work for you. For those that have difficulty leaving factual data behind they could use demographic keywords and try to signal income levels, for example, but your business values will cover more ground and work better.

Why do values work on the web?

On the web people find their groups. News Groups were one of the first social networks long before they were called social networks, and people found their groups by the values they shared. The same is true for Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. Add to this list other web connections like blogs and article sources and you see that the web is a unique media for sharing values.

If you prefer to market yourself in true fashion to who you are then you would need to look on the inside of who you are and the values you hold. This sounds easier than it is, and yet it is all about integrity in marketing. In either method you need to play with psychological values, or you need to hire a marketing shrink to sort it out for you.

You can see why most web marketers are sticking to the demographic style of marketing because it feels more tangible even though the web as a medium is anything but tangible.

I think that everyone has come across one of those web pages written up in the style of long sales copy. The page scrolls down for a long way and every few paragraphs it tantalizes you by saying that you will be told the secret to success, but first it needs to tease you some more and so the long sales copy continues without ever revealing the promised secret.

All the way to the bottom of the page and after much scrolling you get to the final big button to sign up. This big button is no different from the smaller ones closer to the top of the sales copy, but it acts like the grand finale now that you are properly programmed and ready to buy.

Programmed to act accordingly

In the long sales copy the only thing being offered is information that is for sale and the reason for the long sales copy is so that it can write a little program in your head. To do the programming the sales copy need to repeat itself at least 3 times on every major point being made. If you are aware of this then you can see what is happening as you read the long sales copy.

Short sales copy doesn’t work the same way because the short version relies on a certain amount of programming already being in place. We all have a certain amount of programing in place because we live in a marketing environment where we are bombarded with advertising.

Programming comes in threes

In the same way that if we use a new word 3 times it helps us to retain the use of the new word. Programming works in the same way. Television ads repeat the message and the musical jingle to penetrate both our consciousness and our sub-consciousness. The objective is to lodge the product name deep in our thought processes. We may get up when a commercial comes on and go make a cup of tea, but we are still being programmed if we are in earshot of the TV.

We program our young children not to run out onto the road. We repeat the message over and over with emotional emphasis. It’s for their own safety. We hope the programming takes a firm hold and will stop them at the edge of the sidewalk. Then it has done its job.

When a young adult joins the military they will undergo a period of deprogramming to strip away their old habits of thinking and then receive new instructions. Learning something new is not so difficult as getting rid of the old thought patterns. This is what marketing professionals are up against and they use whatever tools that are on hand.

Psychological programming or re-programming

If we want to change our old habits then new programming needs to be repeated often over a period of time. In sales and marketing it is the advertising that attempts to program us, and it is the long sales copy that has the best chance of doing this if people will read the whole page.

The programming is only partially in the repeated message. Some messages are crafted with skill and are more successful. There is a whole rack of positive and negative buttons to push for creating a sale. So we can say that programming is not just repetition but also emotional stimulation.

It is the thought that counts the most but it is the emotional emphasis that captures our attention. Just bringing up logical reasons for switching brands doesn’t always get the attention it deserves. Nor does instilling a little fear sway us to buy a new brand. It is when emotional buttons are pushed and strong logic is presented together that we see a persuasive advertisement.

What happens when you are aware of the programming?

Seldom do we see the programming coming at us because of our own preoccupation with life. This is the same preoccupation that advertising is designed to break through and grab our attention. And when the ad does get our attention we are not looking at the ad itself because we are focused on the message.

However, when we look at what the ad is doing this is when our thinking shifts dramatically. Now that we are aware of the advertising itself we start to see the repeated points and the emotional emphasis. In this way we are able to see the value, if any, being offered and be conscious of the manipulation taking place.

The rule is “Buyer beware”, but a better rule is “Buyer be aware.”

Is programming the only way to market a product?

We are not children about to run out into the street and in the market place we may feel insulted to be treated with the invalidation that advertising carries. Anytime an advertisement does our thinking for us it is nothing short of invalidation. The ad is telling us that we cannot make a good decision on our own.

We can feel the invalidation even if we don’t understand it and we can safely assume that our own market is as sensitive as we are.

In a competitive market place we may be inclined to push with programming and get the job done, and there is always an argument in favor of doing just this. However, the web provides a different option and instead of pushing our market to make a purchase there is the more powerful method of pulling. Call it attraction or magnetic marketing but it works over greater distances and for longer durations of time.

Marketing by attraction was not usually a preferred choice in the brick & mortar world because there was no practical means of marketing a small or medium business over great distance. The cost was too high and the logistics of business growth was a big risk to take.

The web has turned this around

Our web page can scroll down for miles, although this is not a recommended strategy for providing the best and most complete information for our market. There are better ways for navigation to provide the desired information. But what it means is that our web site can attract a market by offering a complete service to our market beginning with information and education.

When is the last time you’ve been in a big box store and had to look for service? What about not finding the information you need on a web site? It’s the same poor service, except there is no excuse for a web site to not be a full service 24/7 outlet. You can put everything you’ve got at the moment into the site just once and never have to repeat the effort. You just add more info as it comes along.

Eliminate the cost of time & space

Space on our web site is not costly. Distance is not a problem. Time has no meaning. The real challenge for us is to be in the top 10 for our preferred search terms. And it turns out that this is not much of a problem either if we provide the quantity and quality of content that our market wants from us because it is the same thing the search engines look for.

With quality information and education we do not need to program our market. We have plenty of time and space to attract our market without pushing them into a purchase. Such a web site has depth and will attract those portions of a market early in the buying cycle. They want and need our assistance as we build a mutual relationship.

The web and its ability to pull, or attract, a market was never possible in the brick and mortar world where every word had a cost and every mile ate up resources. When we look at web marketing as information then we have to wonder why there are so many small business web sites pushing with the high cost of advertising and consumption of resources when pulling reaches further t a lower cost.

Sometimes within web marketing, we can be guilty of placing all of our hopes on our favourite web marketing channels, be that SEO, social media, PPC or another latest technique for overnight success. Any method of sending visitors to our website is a “marketing” channel”. Web marketing however isn’t just about generating traffic, it’s also about enticing that traffic to act. Equally as important as our marketing channels are our marketing destinations. In simple words, “channels” are how we entice people to our site, “destinations” are the places we send them to within our website and/or web properties. This article looks at why we need to consider our marketing channels and destinations as individual parts of an overall online marketing strategy.

People often come into web marketing with an excited focus on one, or more, marketing channels. They have recently read an article outlining why LinkedIn can unlock the true potential of any B2B business, or how the latest changes in Google AdWords allow them to follow their B2C customers around the web. Often, people come into web marketing with the belief that if they can simply get traffic from whatever popular web marketing channel people are talking about today, they will be instantly successful. The truth is that NO web marketing channel can be the sole solution to all of your business dreams. Marketing channels are great at generating traffic, but once we have traffic, we then have to make it as easy as possible for our traffic to find what they are looking for and act.

I Get Traffic But No Customers From My Website

One of the most common statements within web marketing is “I get traffic to my site, but hardly ever any leads or new customers. Web Marketing doesn’t work for me.” If we are getting lots of visitors from any web marketing channel, but not in turn getting at least a handful of new enquiries, then something has to be wrong with the relevance of our web pages with what people are looking for when they find us? The most common reason for lack of conversion is the “destination” we send people to from our chosen web marketing channels. For example, if we “tweet” about white chocolate, but then send people from that tweet via a link to our website homepage that shows many kinds of chocolate, then we are asking our website visitor to do some work in order to find what they were interested in.

So what should I do?

Let’s look at another example. Let’s suppose you let holiday homes in some wonderful seaside, holiday town. Let’s also suppose that some of your homes are dog friendly. Let’s say that you currently run ads via PPC for dog friendly holiday homes in your seaside town. If everyone who clicks on one of your ads lands on your generic website homepage that’s simply shows images of random holiday homes, then we are asking our website visitor to filter out the dog friendly homes from the others. They have to so some work to find what they are looking for.

Alternatively, with a little more work on our part, we could send people clicking on our PPC ads to a dedicated page that only shows your dog friendly homes. Maybe we also show a few great reviews for each one and perhaps even include some images of happy dogs spending time at our pet friendly holiday homes? Our website visitor has landed on a much more enticing and relevant page. We have both given the website visitor less to do and, more importantly, shown them exactly what they were searching for. It’s easier for that website visitor to now act.

In this second instance, our web marketing channel (PPC) and website destination (dedicated dog friendly holiday homes page) work in tandem to promote our holiday properties much more effectively. You may have read/heard the phrase “Landing Page”? A landing page is the most commonly used phrase to describe a website destination used online. I prefer the term “destination” because it helps me envisage an exciting place we send our website visitors to where we help them to “do” something they are interested in.

So, channels and destinations? Anything more?

Last week we went over that the difference between “connect” and “buy”. We can also apply this principle to our work on web marketing channels and destinations. Let’s suppose that a good number of our website visitors to our holiday homes page are not quite ready to purchase their holiday today. Maybe they are unsure where to go on holiday? Maybe they even want to know what would be the best destination for a dog friendly holiday? At present, if they land on our dog friendly holiday homes page, we currently only have a call to action for people ready to buy now. What can we do to “connect” with all those people currently researching where they want to go on holiday with their dog?

What if we offered a free downloadable guide to “Great Dog Walks In and Around Our Wonderful Seaside Town”? If we offer this guide in return for our website visitor’s email address, we have given them an action they can take today that will help them decide whether our seaside town is the place for their holiday, or not. We also gain the ability to continue communicating with that website visitor beyond this initial visit to our webpage. Perhaps some of our website visitors won’t book this time but will next? Perhaps some might book another destination that we offer holiday homes in? Perhaps they were even researching on behalf of someone else? Whatever their reason may be, by giving them an action to take and “connecting” with them (via our free dog walks guide), we have the ability to communicate with them continually about dog friendly holidays. The onus is, of course, on us to communicate well.

Web marketing has never been just about channels. SEO, social media or even PPC are never a sole answer to your online success. To be truly successful, we need to think about where we send people to and how relevant that is to their point of interest. We also need to think about what we offer people as a next action to take. If people are ready to buy great, if however they want to learn more, then we want to help them do that too. Business is a path of customer care, when people come to us we need to look after them every step of the way.